In the period from 1 April to 30 September the minimum amount of royalties levied on regional radio, will be reduced by 50%. About the decision to RAO and VOIS said in a letter to the President of the Russian Academy of radio (RAR). The document also refers to the willingness of organizations to refrain from applying penalties to users, in good faith carrying out the terms of contracts in previous periods, in the case of payment of their remuneration until 30 June 2020. RAR expressed its appreciation for the steps taken and understood the difficult economic situation due to the pandemic coronavirus.
because of the decline in the budgets of advertisers in the current situation, the most affected were the regional radio station, explained the Chairman of the Board of RAO Maxim: “many of them, a catastrophic drop in advertising revenue, but they still had to make a minimum payment – a certain fixed sum per quarter. Now it has halved. So we want to help these stations to have a bad time. We understand the economic difficulties faced by market participants, including our taxpayers, and our commitment”.
As told the Director General of WIPO Alex Karels, these support measures were taken in response to a large number of requests from the regional radio and television stations. “It is now extremely difficult, so we decided to go towards reducing the minimum amount of compensation. Again I have to explain what you mean. We are not talking about interest rate of interest – if income decreased from radio stations, they will be reduced and the RAO, and as a consequence of the authors. Everything is logical. In the case of a minimum fixed amount of royalties according to our rates, this correlation does not arise. Even being in difficult situation, the company is forced to consistently pay the same amount. This is wrong, so the decision was made to reduce it by half,” – said Karels.
industry positively assessed adopted by RAO and VOIS measures, said Vice-President of the Russian Academy of Radio, the head of holding “GPM-Radio” Yuri Kostin: “This is a really worthy partner solution, balanced and timely. We are pleased that after negotiation on behalf of RAR we with colleagues were able to reach agreements even more not for himself but for regional players who have suffered so much because of the pandemic. Friends are learned in trouble, in this case partners are learned in the crisis. I hope that the entire industry will not forget about it and will continue to responsibly work with societies for collective management of rights.”
From a legal point of view, this solution would require a revision of methods of calculationand compensation for specific groups of offenders, draws the attention of the founder of the Online school appraisers of intellectual property, judicial expert-member of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Court for intellectual property rights, leading researcher of CEMI RAS Alexander Kostin: “This is good news as this initiative to RAO and VOIS will reduce the costs and risks of the licensees of the audio content. But then it is worth considering that when the recovery payment “equivalent to twice the amount of the usage rights” under 1311 of the civil code the Foundation will serve as the license agreement and spelled out the minimum payout. That is, if the violation occurred during the period of this decline and corresponds to the “minimum payment”, then forensic experts will need to develop a new methodological basis for calculating the amount of compensation for a certain group of offenders under articles 1301 and 1311 of the civil code”.
